Now that the legislative session (minus override day) is in the rearview, it’s time to address Final Reading, VTDigger’s self-described “inside guide to the Statehouse.” That might be technically accurate, but it was the glossy, gossipy kind of “inside guide,” not the kind that provides insight. More often than not, it failed to dig beneath the surface. Instead, it picked up shiny trinkets and held them aloft as if proffering precious gems.

I could enumerate, and I will. But I need to emphasize, up front, that there’s nothing inherently wrong with snark or cynicism or the occasional eyeroll or even barf emoji. The real problem is Final Reading’s posture of contempt for its subject. The legislative process is boring, don’t you know. It’s a real drag. It’ll bore you to tears or put you to sleep or at least make you all hangry.

Earlier this year, one of Digger’s staff reporters tweeted out a recommendation for Final Reading as — paraphrasing here — a newsletter for people who don’t like politics.

I’m sorry, but no. That’s precisely backwards. Final Reading is for people who are interested in state politics and policymaking and want to know more. The people who don’t like politics are not reading VTDigger at all, much less a daily precís of all things Statehouse. Know your audience, people.

The sad apotheosis of this attitude came in a brief April 30 item by Bureau Chief Who’d Rather Be Somewhere Else, Anywhere Else Really Sarah Mearhoff, regarding the annual Statehouse adjournment pool. Here’s how she assessed the contending dates:

Most betters put their money on May 10, the day that House and Senate leaders have staked out as the final day of the session. (Sticking to leadership’s script — how original!) Six optimists bet they’d get out a day early, on May 9. (It’s called manifestation; look it up.) A slew of masochists gambled on session bleeding into the weekend of May 11 and 12th (ughhhhhhhhhh), and others into the following week. Two Debbie Downers — Rep. Woodman Page, R-Newport City, and Ted Barnett from the Joint Fiscal Office — bet they’d be in the building as late as Thursday, May 16. (Boo! Hiss!)

Okay, nobody wants to work overtime. But if you’re going to hold the title of Bureau Chief, please don’t tell me you can’t wait to get the fuck out of there.

The end-of-session jam-up is extra work for reporters, but it’s also a golden opportunity to showcase your skills. You’ve got a front-row seat. You get to troll the hallways and pose impertinent questions to the great and powerful. You are our eyes and ears. Can you not pretend, at the very least, to appreciate the privilege?

This unseemly ennui was on full display in the April 19 edition of Final Reading, in which Mearhoff recounted the Senate Appropriations Committee’s final deliberations on the new budget. Mearhoff went on at length about how insufferable thing it was — but didn’t actually report any information about, you know, what was in the budget.

It made me wonder, not only about the author, but about what in Hell the editors at VTDigger are up to. They are an experienced, credible, professional bunch. If a reporter is trying to pass off a piece that’s long on self-absorption and short on content, the editor ought to be cracking the (entirely metaphorical) whip.

There have also been frequent signs of clock-punching by the Final Reading gang. The easiest way for a Statehouse reporter to get through a day is to cover a press conference. I mean, God bless anyone who calls a Statehouse presser, but there are a shit-ton of ’em — often more than one per day — and most of them don’t generate any real news. Final Reading has been making a habit of relying on press conferences.

A sharp-eyed editor should greet the idea of covering a presser with deep skepticism if not outright rejection. Especially on May 9, the day before adjournment when the lawmaking is at a blistering pace, when Final Reading offered a lovely piece of stenography about a press conference.

A press conference by the same coalition that had held a seemingly identical press conference less than two weeks earlier. This was the best VTDigger’s crack Statehouse team could do on one of the most action-packed days of the session?

I’ll answer that. No, it was not. They settled.

I could also do without the cutesy-poo familiarity that’s become part and parcel of the Final Reading experience. I don’t need Mearhoff addressing me as “Dear Reader” or “Final Reader” or generally breaking the fourth wall unless there’s a damn good reason for it. I don’t need a fake buddy-buddy relationship with a reporter.

I’m not going to criticize the occasional dip into personality journalism, like Mearhoff’s gardening chat with Sen. Jane Kitchel or her Pulitzer-bait exposé of Senate President Pro Tem Phil Baruth’s Taylor Swift fandom, or even the overt filler item about a cafeteria worker’s Leap Day birthday. Those things are fine for bringing a little color to the proceedings. They’re a side dish, the cranberry sauce that’s good for a couple tablespoonsful on your overburdened Thanksgiving Day dinner plate. (I will say the gardening chat, coming on the last day of the session, was curiously timed.) Just don’t overdo the sauce. It wears out its welcome in a hurry.

The failures of Final Reading would simply be annoying if not for the fact that Digger is the only media outlet that regularly has more than one reporter roaming the halls. Digger is the only outlet with the bandwidth to report on the Statehouse in depth. Final Reading is a major part of its daily effort. It needs to do better.